"Good Night, Moon"

The waxing gibbous

11.8 days old moon

90.5 percent lit

May 1, 2018
By Dr. Tony Phillips

May 1, 2018:  Sunspots (click here) are becoming scarce. Very scarce. So far in 2018 the sun has been blank almost 60% of the time, with whole weeks going by without sunspots. Today’s sun, shown here in an image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, is typical of the featureless solar disk:...

The fact that sunspots are vanishing comes as no surprise. Forecasters have been saying for years that this would happen as the current solar cycle (“solar cycle 24”) comes to an end. The surprise is how fast.

“Solar cycle 24 is declining more quickly than forecast,” announced NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center on April 26th. This plot shows observed sunspot numbers in blue vs. the official forecast in red:...

“The smoothed, predicted sunspot number for April-May 2018 is about 15,” says NOAA. “However, the actual monthly values have been [significantly] lower.”

“Official” forecasts of the solar cycle come from NOAA’s Solar Cycle Prediction Panel–a group of experts from NOAA, NASA, the US Air Force, universities and other research organizations. They have been convening at intervals since 1989 to predict the timing and intensity of Solar Max. The problem is, no one really knows how to predict the solar cycle. The most recent iteration of the panel in 2006-2008 compared 54 different methods ranging from empirical extrapolations of historical data to cutting-edge supercomputer models of the sun’s magnetic dynamo. None fully described what is happening now....

Give up the whaling, it is unbecoming and a foreign culture.

It hardly seems right to review Japan. Japan has been the moral leader of Earth's tropospheric protection for some time now. They developed "Kyoto Protocol" and gave the Climate Crisis a definition. The global community should be grateful for Japan and their marvellous scientists. 

Japan is a leader in other areas, too. They love computers and technology and are some of the earliest achievements with the application of Artificial Intelligence. There is a high demand for electricity with that technology so Japan's scientists need to consider the electricity load to their developed technologies and do more with less. 

I love Japan. It is an incredible country. It should develop it's own culture and abandon the prestige of whaling. Earth needs her whales more than the Japanese dinner table does. It really surprises me that the Japanese culture with all it's improvements in diet and health still carries out whaling. The carcinogens in whale meat of any kind is dense. The whales swim through some of the most polluted waters in the world and their meat is not safe for consumption, yet Japan still insists on whaling. It is counter-culture and it's history is mired in the recommendations for economic recovery after WWII.

The Japanese culture developed by mimicking the USA's economy, but, no one really spears whales anymore. Japan is walking in a shadow of vigilance after the bombs were dropped. The country needs to consider in shedding the delicacies of marine mammals. By all rights, those that test for endangered species in markets around the world could site Japan when the Minke whales they claim is for scientific purposes show up on the food menus of the Japanese.

Japan is a great country with great values, what went wrong with whaling?

Japan has some time to respond to it's shrinking population.

June 4, 2018
By Dan Kopf

Japan is shrinking. Fast. (click here)

The health ministry recently announced that only 946,060 babies were born in Japan in 2017, the fewest births since official statistics began in 1899. At the same time, 1,340,433 Japanese people died last year. This means that the non-immigrant population declined by nearly 400,000 people.

It’s an astonishing shift. The Japanese population grew steadily throughout the 20th century, from around 44 million in 1900 to 128 million in 2000. The gains were primarily due to increased life expectancy, but also buoyed by families that typically had at least two children. But beginning in the late 1970s, birth rates crashed. While the average Japanese woman had 2.1 kids in the 1970s, today, they only have about 1.4—far lower than in comparably wealthy countries like the US and Sweden.

Today, Japan is a land of aging baby boomers and young adults who don’t want to have kids. By median age, Japan is the oldest large country in the world. More than half of its population is over the age of 46. By comparison, in Nigeria, just over a tenth of the population is over that age....

Fight the "cuteness" craze!

Otters are not happy in cages!

June 21, 2018

By Akemi Kanda

A boom in demand (click here) for otters as pets, inspired by their recent higher profile on TV and in novelty cafes, apparently led to a surge in attempted smuggling of the mammals to Japan last year.

According to Traffic, a nongovernmental organization that monitors illicit trade in wild animals, at least 45 otters intended for smuggling were confiscated in Southeast Asia in 2017, and a majority--32--were headed for Japan.

None of the total of 14 otters confiscated in Southeast Asian countries in 2015 and 2016 were planned to be sold in Japan. But evidence of a black market for the animals in Japan existed in 2016, when seven oriental small-clawed otters smuggled from Thailand were confiscated at Narita Airport.

Tomomi Kitade, director of Traffic Japan, said, “It is possible that Japan’s boom of having otters as pets has led to an illegal trade.”

Four kinds of otters are found in Southeast Asia, three of which, including the oriental small-clawed otter, are designated as endangered species in the “red list” of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources....

A different kind of Amazon. The reverse curve of carbon sinks increases the carbon load of Earth.

June 21, 2018 

Paris - Earth’s intact forests shrank (click here) by an area larger than Austria every year from 2014 to 2016 and at a 20 percent faster rate than during the previous decade, scientists said Wednesday as the U.N. unveiled an initiative to harness the “untapped potential” of the land sector to fight climate change.

Despite a decades-long effort to halt deforestation, nearly 10 percent of undisturbed forests have been fragmented, degraded or simply chopped down since 2000, according to the analysis of satellite imagery.

Average daily loss over the first 17 years of this century was more than 200 square kilometers (75 square miles).

“Degradation of intact forest represents a global tragedy, as we are systematically destroying a crucial foundation of climate stability,” said Frances Seymour, a senior distinguished fellow at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and a contributor to the research, presented this week at a conference in Oxford.

“Forests are the only safe, natural, proven and affordable infrastructure we have for capturing and storing carbon.”

The findings come as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and five major conservation organizations launched a five-year plan, Nature4Climate, to better leverage land use in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming....

The USA introduced the whale culture into Japan after WWII. It is time Japan end it as an invasive culture.

Baleen whales are vitally important to ending the carbon pollution problem. They eat algae and plankton that remain in their bellies, muscle, blubber and babies forever. When a baleen whale dies naturally, they fall to the bottom of the ocean and the carbon dioxide they ate in their lifetimes remain sequestered in the depths of the oceans forever.

We lost the corals, we need to expand the populations of baleen whales in the oceans.


30 May 2018
By Jacinta Bowler

Every Christmas, (click here) sailors from Japan go out into the Southern Ocean, taking "biological sampling" that aims to investigate "the structure and dynamics of the Antarctic marine ecosystem".

But no, they aren't trying to understand more about climate change, or investigating the mating songs of the ocean. They're out killing hundreds of Antarctic minke whales, and then letting the flesh be sold in markets and restaurants.

The latest figures have been released from meeting papers by the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee earlier this month.

According to those figures, 333 minke whales were killed in the 2017/2018 summer season in Australia. Of those, 122 were pregnant, and 114 were immature, meaning they were not yet able to breed.

The researchers wrote that killing the whales is necessary, as "age information can be obtained only from internal earplugs and therefore only through lethal sampling methods."

However, most researchers do not agree witBut no, they aren't trying to understand more about climate change, or investigating the mating songs of the ocean. They're out killing hundreds of Antarctic minke whales, and then letting the flesh be sold in markets and restaurants.

The latest figures have been released from meeting papers by the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee earlier this month.

According to those figures, 333 minke whales were killed in the 2017/2018 summer season in Australia. Of those, 122 were pregnant, and 114 were immature, meaning they were not yet able to breed.

The researchers wrote that killing the whales is necessary, as "age information can be obtained only from internal earplugs and therefore only through lethal sampling methods."

However, most researchers do not agree with this, as you can estimate the age of a whale by comparing its size to other whales that you know the age of.

The claims that whales need to be killed 'for science' have been debunked many times.h this, as you can estimate the age of a whale by comparing its size to other whales that you know the age of.

The claims that whales need to be killed 'for science' have been debunked many times....

The Trump Secretary afraid of his own shadow is over reaching his authority.

If Perry can't do his job he needs to leave.

June 22, 2018

By Sam Mintz 

EPA sent some surprising advice to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (click here) this week about tools the independent regulator could use to consider greenhouse gas emissions as part of pipeline reviews.

FERC launched a notice of inquiry about its natural gas pipeline certificate policy in April and is taking comments from members of the public on a series of questions about factors it considers when reviewing pipeline applications.

One of those categories is the evaluation of environmental impacts of proposed pipeline projects, which has been a controversial issue at FERC in recent months and divided its commissioners.

The most notable feature of the comments from EPA, which were filed by the director of the Office of Federal Activities, Robert Tomiak, yesterday, is the suggestion of several tools FERC could use in evaluating upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions from new pipelines.

"In situations where FERC decides to conduct analysis of [greenhouse gas] emissions of proposed projects, EPA recommends a number of available tools that can be used," the letter says....

This is according to the World Bank. The USA is not upholding it's moral obligations to allies or the global population.

Clean energy is growing quickly. But time is running out to rein in carbon emissions.

Nature 556, 422-425 (2018)
25  April 2018
By Jeff Tollefson

...So it was in 2017, (click here) when, after staying relatively flat from 2014 to 2016, carbon emissions grew by about 1.5% (see ‘A brief lull’). All it took to create that spike was a small rise in economic growth across the developing world, according to a final estimate released in March by the Global Carbon Project, an international research consortium that monitors carbon emissions and climate trends....

...That small blip in China’s coal emissions might have been a major contributor to the spike, but developments in other countries also played a part (see ‘The big contributors’). India’s emissions rose faster than expected, owing to stronger economic growth. Thanks to changes in fossil-fuel consumption, emissions in the United States and European Union dropped more slowly in 2017 than in years past. Then there is the rest of the world, whose emissions rose by 2% in 2017, according to the Global Carbon Project’s analysis. That includes developing countries, where tapping fossil fuels remains a relatively cheap and easy way of making economic progress....

...Kejun’s calculations suggest that, driven both by policy and economics, China’s carbon emissions are still on track to peak as early as 2020, and its coal consumption could drop by as much as 40–50% by 2030. “The transition has already started,” says Kejun....

...Today, the solar-power industry is booming in India, thanks to government incentives and falling prices, and the Indian government aims to install 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022 — nearly double the current solar-generation capacity in the United States. Meeting that goal could be challenging, because solar power will increasingly need to compete with existing coal-fired power plants for limited space on the electricity grid, says Rahul Tongia, an energy researcher at the non-profit public-policy organization the Brookings Institution in New Delhi. Still, he says, the trends are impressive. “Maybe it takes a bit longer to hit the targets. Who cares?” Tongia says. “The progress is still remarkable, measurable, dramatic and meaningful.”...

The Japanese economy has always been vibrant and the Japanese people have an exceptionally good quality of life.

Japan GDP per capita 2008: $45,165.9
USA GDP per capita 2008: $49,364..6

Japan GDP per capita 2009: $42,724.5
USA GDP per capita 2009: $47,575.6



Japan GDP per capita 2016: $47607.7
USA GDP per capita 2016: $52,194.9

Regardless, of the difference in GDP, Japan never abandoned it's morals and national conscience.

July 26, 2016
By Benjamen DoVale

There is little correlation between “working hard” (click here) (usually measured as hours worked per week) and GDP per capita levels. If this were the case, the Germans would rank lowest on productivity scales and Japanese/Koreans/Mexicans at the top....

...In terms of differing levels of productivity on a sectoral basis, the Japanese economy is infamous for its “two Japans” phenomenon where export-oriented industries such as autos and electronics are highly efficient while other “protected industries,” e.g. retail, agriculture, are comically inefficient (Google the “Large Scale Retail Store Law” and the quasi-NRA “Japan Agriculture” political pressure group).

The United States, while seeing inequality yawn ever wider, has maintained robust economic growth with the rise of the Silicon Valley and financial sectors....

Japan is the fifth most polluting country in the world. BUT, the national conscience developed Kyoto Protocol.

The volume (click here) of greenhouse gases emitted by 40 industrialised countries that report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change increased by 1% in 2007. Between 1990 and 2007 emissions fell by 4% in these countries. Control of greenhouse gases varied widely over the period.

December 11, 2017

Tokyo - Japan’s greenhouse gas (click here) emissions fell 0.2 percent to a six-year low in the financial year that ended last March, government figures showed on Tuesday, amid growing use of renewable energy and the gradual return of nuclear power.

Emissions in the 2016 financial year fell for a third straight year to 1.322 billion metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent from 1.325 billion tonnes the year before, hitting their lowest since fiscal 2010, according to preliminary data from the environment ministry.

The world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter, Japan has set a goal to cut its emissions by 26 percent from 2013 levels to 1.042 billion tonnes by 2030....

The US is the biggest carbon polluter in history.

June 1, 2017
by Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich

“In cumulative terms, (click here) we certainly own this problem more than anybody else does,” said David G. Victor, a longtime scholar of climate politics at the University of California, San Diego. Many argue that this obligates the United States to take ambitious action to slow global warming.

But on Thursday, President Trump announced the United States would withdraw from a 195-nation agreement on climate change reached in Paris in 2015.

The decision to walk away from the accord is a momentous setback, in practical and political terms, for the effort to address climate change.

An American exit could prompt other countries to withdraw from the pact or rethink their emissions pledges, making it much harder to achieve the agreement’s already difficult goal of limiting global warming to a manageable level....

Graph (click here)

The history (click here) of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions from Japan is remarkable for the abrupt change that occurred in 1973. With postwar growth at 9.8% per year from 1950 to 1973, total emissions were virtually constant from 1974-1987. From 1987-96, emissions grew 25.3% reaching 329 million metric tons of carbon. Growth during this period was characterized by a return to mid-1970s consumption levels for liquid petroleum products and increased contributions from coal and natural gas use. Since 1996, Japan's fossil-fuel CO2emissions have vacilated and now total 329 million metric tons of carbon in 2008. Based on United Nations energy trade data for 2008, Japan is the world's largest importer of coal (184 million metric tons) and liquified petroleum gas (13.2 million metric tons) and the second largest importer of crude oil (191 million metric tons) and natural gas (3.72 billion terajoules). Japan's per capita fossil-fuel CO2 emission rate for 2008 stands at 2.59 metric tons of carbon.

---

CITE AS: Boden, T.A., G. Marland, and R.J. Andres. 2011. Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2011

Yuri Fuikawa is not aspiring to be a porn star, she figures if a woman "Has the name, she may as well have the fame."

It's Sunday Night

Yuri Fijikawa is a woman politician that needs to stay in politics. It seems women in Japan are still going through many issues Americans have conquered. At least we think we did. There is the Family and Medical Leave Act that allows Mom and Dad time at home after the birth of a child. But, in Japan there is some doubt about society's openness to working mothers and their aspiration to having more than one child and sometimes in their 30s.

Ms. Fijikawa is always in the center of some kind of sex scandal, but, is mostly the sex scandal that wasn't. She gets attention, still today even though allegations of a sex scandal was years ago and it appears she is now engaged. She has once been voted the most beautiful woman politician in the world in a Spanish magazine.

I wish women around the world were taken seriously without being the most sexiest in the world. A title does a lot to get the attention of the media and the electorate. The film of "soft porn" is nto soft porn. Maybe in Japan it is, but, not normally. The most exotic the DVD gets is in this picture where her panties are showing. Taht is PG13 in the US movie rating system.

July 31, 2009

Aomori - Hachinohe City councilwoman Yuri Fujikawa, 29, (click here) who has been referred to by bloggers as being "too beautiful to be a politician" and who was voted “World’s Most Beautiful Politician” in an online survey held by Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos earlier this year, was caught on camera Thursday walking out of a business hotel in the morning with a 38-year-old Democratic party politician from Iwata, who was likely headed home to his wife and children.

The weekly magazines once before caught Fujikawa hopping into her ex-boyfriend's BMW straight after work, and the politician was quoted in Sankei Sports as saying "He's still a good friend, even now."

When Fujikawa appeared at a movie screening in Hachinohe at the end of May this year, she was sporting a big sparkly ring on her left ring finger. On her blog, she posted, "There are rumors of some hot romance and an engagement..." but she denied her romantic involvement with anyone....

June 3, 2018

Tokyo: Sayako (click here) had been trying to conceive a second child for two years when her boss at a Japanese daycare centre suggested she stop because she had missed her ‘turn’.

Sayako, who spoke to AFP using a pseudonym, learned her boss had an unwritten policy that experts say is not uncommon in Japan: an informal “pregnancy rota” for employees.

“Why don’t you take a break, you already have one,” her boss said, despite knowing Sayako was so keen to get pregnant that she was seeing a fertility specialist.

“I was so shocked and stunned that I couldn’t answer,” the 35-year-old told AFP.

Sayako’s boss told her that an older newly-wed at her workplace now had priority when it came to having children.

She quit the job and moved to another daycare centre, recently giving birth to her second child.

If she had stayed, “I think I’d have said ‘I’m sorry'” instead of celebrating the birth of the baby.

The issue of “pregnancy rotas” hit the headlines earlier this year when a man wrote about his wife’s experience getting pregnant “out of turn”....                    

This is a latin transliteration of the Japanese language.

Kimigayo 

His Majesty's Reign

Kimigayo wa

May your reign

Chiyo ni yachiyo ni 

Continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations

Sazare ishi no

Until the pebbles

Iwao to narite

Grow into boulders

Koke no musu made

Lush with moss

君が代は
千代に八千代に
さざれ（細）石の
いわお（巌）となりて
こけ（苔）の生すまで（迄

Poetic English translation

Thousands of years of happy reign be thine;
Rule on, my lord (Akihito), until what are pebbles now
By ages united to mighty rocks shall grow
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.

The women of Pakistan are not receiving respect and are treated as sex objects.

There are some women on the ballot this election year. Women's rights and respect should be a topic every election in Pakistan.

June 1, 2018
By Sabeer Lodhi

Left: Meesha Shafi and Ali Zafar; looks can be deceiving (click here)

...In contrast, (click here) when Meesha Shafi spoke up about Ali Zafar sexually harassing her, she was witch-hunted till she had to deactivate her Instagram account, and was a recipient of more abuse than support. There was nothing that was not questioned about her; men and women on social, electronic and print media assassinated her character left, right and centre....

Evidently, Pakistani men are studied up on what is occurring with #MeToo. The men are marching forward with full self-righteousness in sexual assault and sexual harassment. The worst of it seems to be 80 college co-eds that were sexually assaulted while taking an exam. Evidently, the professor did think an academic exam was in order so much as a physical exam.

To the right is the Facebook entry regarding the sexual assault and harassment.

...She is not alone, 79 other girls have also allegedly been harassed by him and 18 of them have recorded their testimonies online.

Confessions of the victims.

18 testimonies so far. pic.twitter.com/WdnfqpAtXS

- Alsa (@OfficiallyAlsa)

May 29, 2018
“After I was done writing I visually realised a hand was extending to my chest.”

Let that sink in. Eighty girls no older than 18 were sexually harassed by their invigilator. Current and former students of other universities and schools, including the prestigious Army Public School, have come forward and narrated similar incidences. It seems that Bashir is obviously a pervert who has not been investigated for many years, despite being reported numerous times....

I don't expect a USA Congressperson to bring about a lawsuit within Pakistan on behalf of the women, but, perhaps during this election in Pakistan a high profile interview in the USA about the movement here and how it has changed the esteem of American women would result in awareness within the political races of women that want respect, instead of intimidation to receive good grades.

Molesting 80 co-eds not more than 18 years old is outrageous and I don't know how this professor has gotten away with it. I can only imagine what the price would be like for them if they didn't have a woman professor in the room as well.

If the professor is so inclined to seek sexual pleasures, perhaps watching Pakistan porn would work well for him and leave his students alone.

The question a year ago that spawned this article is, "Will pornography create more freedom in Pakistan?"

June 2017
By An Phung

...This scene, (click here) courtesy of Zofeen Ebrahim from Le Temps, was the description of an adult movie house in one of the most unlikely places in the world: Peshawar, the capital of the most conservative province in Pakistan. The men (and some women), she says, are "watching a porn film, right under the nose of the religious political parties, the Taliban and the government."...

Ms. Clifford wants her case moved back to state court.

June 21, 2018
By Ramsey Touchberry

Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford), (click here) the adult film star who is suing President Trump and his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, said on Thursday that she plans to visit the southern border next week where thousands of migrant children have been separated from their parents.

“I am headed down in a week. Don't worry,” she tweeted in response to someone asking her to help the migrant kids. “Just figuring out my best course of action to maximize my resources.”...

June 22, 2018
By Edvard Pettersson

Stephanie Clifford, (click here) the adult-movie star professionally known as Stormy Daniels, wants the lawsuit alleging her former lawyer colluded with Donald Trump’s long-term attorney Michael Cohen sent back to state court.

Cohen used “procedural gamesmanship” to have the case she filed June 6 in California state court in Los Angeles transferred to a U.S. federal court, Clifford said Friday in a court filing.

The lawsuit is against Keith Davidson, who negotiated the $130,000 “hush payment” she received in 2016 from Cohen not to discuss an alleged tryst she had with Trump a decade earlier. The suit followed a previous case she filed against Trump and Cohen to get out from under the non-disclosure agreement. Cohen and Trump moved that case to federal court where a judge put it on hold because of an ongoing criminal investigation of Cohen.

In Friday’s filing, Clifford argues that the more recent case belongs in state court because Davidson is a California resident....

The lady is still working. And the colors purple and red are often favorite colors for porn art. Ms. Clifford is not going anywhere any time soon. She is well liked in the porn industry, by her customers and fans and the industry is extremely profitable and worth a lot more than Trump.

...According to various reports, (click here) currently, the porn industry’s net worth is about $97 billion. This money is enough to feed at-least 4.8 billion people a day. Every year, Hollywood releases roughly 600 movies and makes $10 billion in profit. And how much porn industry makes? 13,000 films and close to $15 billion in profit. The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined....

The adult porn industry also serves a highly diverse group, including any and all of the LGBTQ community. It has served these folks for a long time.

I wish her and her family well.

June 19, 2018
By Ron Maxey

Adult film star Stormy Daniels receives a key to the city of West Hollywood, May 23, 2018 in West Hollywood, Calif. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, earned international headlines for her legal battle with President Trump over an alleged affair she claims the pair had a decade ago. West Hollywood Mayor John Duran proclaiming ``Stormy Daniels Day'' in West Hollywood, recognized Clifford for "her leadership in the #RESIST movement.''

They wait under the purple awning (click here) just outside the thick double doors as a security guard pats them down under a soft red neon glow. 

Concrete ponies, on hind legs, peer down from either end of the rooftop above, while more purple and red neon screams "Girls, Girls, Girls" from the sign behind them.

Then they're inside. A smiling cardboard cutout Donald Trump, two thumbs up, greets them at the cash register. The door host behind the glass counter, who looks like she's dressed to dance ("I do everything here," she says), strains to hear the steady stream of phone queries over the dull thud of music leaking from behind the next pair of double doors.

"VIP seating is more," she shouts into the phone as the just-vetted customers from outside wait patiently, wallets in hand. "I'll have to ask a manager if we still have any VIP seating."...

There is litigation that looks as though it will succeed.

The litigation (on Buzzfeed - click here) has tons of case law cited. All the case law is from the USA. The attorneys involved are representing three parents currently in detention facilities. There is a father that has no knowledge of his 12 year old girl, a mother who has spoken with her son age, 9 I think, twice since May and another mother with three children, the youngest 2, that has the most support in talking to her children twice a week for 10 minutes.

The parents are calling this torture because they do not have intimate information about their children such as their whereabouts, the wellness, the food they are eating and if they are being cared for.

The US authorities involved in this state there are currently 500 families reunited, but, thousands more to go.

June 22, 2018
By Zoe Tillman

David and Margaret Youth & Family Services in La Verne is one of four agencies providing shelter and foster care services to about 100 kids that were separated from parents at the border. 

In a quiet nook (click here) in the small city of La Verne, small cottages topped with Spanish tile are spread across a sprawling green campus.

Long ago, it was an orphanage; now it’s a group home for foster kids. Recently, it also became one of several shelters in the Los Angeles area that quietly began to house kids who have been split from their parents at the border....

... Details began to emerge Friday about the whereabouts of the separated children sent to Los Angeles and other locations around the country. But this has done little to ease concerns about the children's welfare.

“People can have the best intentions to help, but it can be very detrimental for the children,” said Camila Alvarez, managing attorney with the Central American Resource Center. “Some of these places are not well-known intentionally.”

Some immigration advocates said they were hopeful the children would receive good care at the Southern California facilities.

“Believe me, these kids are way better off here being cared for than probably any other place in the U.S.,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, on Facebook. Her organization works directly with children in detention.

She added that her organization’s clients "who have been housed in local shelters have never raised any safety concerns."

Most of the kids in the L.A. area are under 9. They are reportedly detained in facilities and foster homes run by at least four nonprofit agencies.

Officials with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency charged with managing the kids, did not respond to repeated requests for comment....               

I take it she and her family didn't order a wedding cake.

June 23, 2018
By Christina Zhao

After a Virginia restaurant (click here) reportedly threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family on Friday night, reviewers swarmed to their Facebook and Yelp page to post feedback.

On Friday night, Jaike Foley-Schultz, allegedly a waiter at The Red Hen, a restaurant on Washington Street in Lexington, took to Facebook to announce that Sanders was prevented from eating at their establishment.

“I just served Sarah huckabee sanders for a total of 2 minutes before my owner kicked her out along with 7 of her other family members…” he wrote.

Sanders confirmed the incident in a Saturday morning tweet saying, "Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left," she wrote. "Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so."...